


As If It's Your Last Tour: on the road with Blackpink

by cluelesskaru



Category: BLACKPINK (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen, Punk Rock, Recreational Drug Use, karu likes to try different things, set in the 70's/80's, written like a Rolling Stone Article
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 08:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11399112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cluelesskaru/pseuds/cluelesskaru
Summary: With sold out arena tours and a massive global following, Blackpink has spoken up about everything but this: what's nextor"We're not going anywhere. Haters can suck it and get used to us. We still have a lot more noise to make."





	As If It's Your Last Tour: on the road with Blackpink

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the feel-good hit of the summer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389424) by [disco_vendetta (brinn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinn/pseuds/disco_vendetta). 



> **Disclaimer:** The inspiration to write in this format came from time immemorial--a fic I read from the The 100 fandom back in 2014. I don't own any credit over it.  
>   
>  Also, the lyrics for _As If It's Your Las_ t are nothing like I said they are in this. I wish they were.
> 
> I've never written for the Blackpink fandom before, and I'm clearly trying different things by writing this. Hopefully I didn't fuck it up and won't offend anyone by it haha OTL
> 
> (This work wasn't beta'ed, please excuse any mistakes~)

 

 

**As If It's Your Last Tour: on the road with Blackpink**

_With sold out arena tours and a massive global following, Blackpink has spoken up about everything but this: what's next_

By Hani Ahn

July 18, 1980

 

 **New York** —  

"USED TO be no one cared if I could play or not. All they screamed for was for me to show them my titties." Roseanne Park, main vocalist and guitar player of Blackpink, told me matter of factly. The now 22 year old threw her strawberry blonde hair off her shoulder and clicked her tongue. "My breasts aren't even big."

I asked her if they ask for different things now and this, for some reason, made her laugh. "Yeah. They keep wanting me to prove myself."

Park, known by the masses as Rosé, is normally a woman of many words, but as her bandmates warmed up for that night's concert, her eyes suddenly wandered everywhere in the room but at me.

"They want me to prove myself." She mused once more, talking to no one in particular.

 

ROSÉ HAD agreed to talk to me for what was meant to be her first in-depth interview in two years. On our second attempt, she joined me in the living-room of the home the band shares and sat down on the sofa. She wore no make up, a battered The Clash shirt and ripped jeans.

"Let's start before I change my mind again." She said looking at me with disarming intensity. "I wanna talk this time."

An enthusiastic conversationalist, Rosé speaks in quick spurts and her speech pattern might seem scattered to an untrained ear, words dragged with the ramains of an aussie accent. The truth is she was three steps ahead of me the whole time.

"To this day I don't know what our first single was about, but it sounded like sex, and no one saw it coming, and it's still one of the best riffs I've ever come up with."

 

THE NIGHT before, in the first of three sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden, Blackpink made the ground shake in one of the finest shows of its five-year career. Without any introduction, the band launched into _As If It's Your Last,_ their new ska-punk single. The tension of not-knowing if they were going to make it again at home or not was evident during the soundcheck, the members kept to themselves, going through their personal warming-up rituals. I watched them closely, wondering if that was how it always was, if any of them would snap.

Despite all that tension, nothing of it was carried into their performance.

Blackpink's live sound relies on teeth clattering drums that are the work of Jisoo, the beat underneath the gnash of Lisa's bass, who takes the stage up storm with a force to be reckoned with. Jennie and Rosé guitars and voices sound as dangerous as they look up there. With magnetic presences and sultry voices, they drown the crowd in verses about love and ideology, hypnotic with their distinct influences of rockabilly, jazz, New Orleans' R&B and reggae sub-genres, accompanied by a brass section that gives a whole other feel for this tour.

It had been a long time since the four women took a home stage like this, a couple of years at least, and maybe it was the sum of all things—how long it had been, how alive the crowd was around me or the sheer excitement that seemed to come from the stage in waves—but I think it was the most persuasive rock & roll concert I've ever been to. Period.  

It was the first night of the now sold-out U.S tour, that turned out to be one of the largest grossing undertaking in rock history, specially for a girl band. That specific line, though—"specially for a girl band"—, is something that Blackpink has fought against throughout their entire career. They're a rock band half-way into a world tour that started with enormous arena concerts in Asia a month ago. It doesn't matter if they're women or not, they're giving the old dinosaurs in this business a run for their money, that's for sure.

Backstage I tried to approach Rosé again, since she had said we would start that day, but in the dressing room brimming with a hazy mix of fans, press and roadies, I saw her from afar; she was in her element, kissing whoever entered her bubble and laughing delightedly at anything anyone said.

This side of the room, Lalisa Manoban and Jisoo Kim were leaning in a far corner, sharing something that looked like a blunt. "Want some?" Jisoo offered with a surprisingly sweet voice. Jennie Kim showed up out of nowhere and made them put the thing out, smiling tight lipped at me.

"They're not supposed to smoke in here," She told me before pulling her bandmates outside.

I went home and let the whole experience sink in.

 

"I CHANGED my mind again," Rosé got up from the couch in a spur or energy. She did so in the middle of an answer, and I startled so badly, that for a moment I could only stare at her. "Why did I say I'd do it solo? We should be doing this together."

Rosé stepped into the balcony to smoke a cigarette while Jung Mo Kim, their manager, called the rest of the band upstairs to join us.

Their penthouse apartment is comfortable and just large enough for the five musicians to live in it without tripping over each other. Signs of their impeding departure were everywhere, from a few suitcases already by the door and random items forgotten on the dinner table. There's no luxury and no signs of the debauchery the media usually appoints them to. The entire place is homey and cool, somewhere you'd really want to come to after a long tour.

 

ACCORDING TO the lore surrounding this band, Rosé, who writes nearly all of Blackpink's music, is the band's core, even though the intense Jennie writes the bulk of the lyrics. Known for her fierceness on stage and strong vocals, Jennie is also among the gentler, more considerate people I've ever spent time with. She went as far as stopping the whole thing so we all could stretch a little and have something to drink.

Meanwhile the fans see Jisoo as sensitive and vulnerable, prone to losing her train of thought. Indeed, she looked distracted when she arrived, wearing sweats and a cropped top with her hair tied up in a messy knot, but she quickly made the atmosphere lighter just with a few key words. Being the oldest—a couple of years separate her from their youngest, Lisa—didn't seem to change anything in their dynamics. With most of the members being of korean descent, I expected them to follow some kind of hierarchy. They don't.

Seated on the arm of the couch with a loose grin, Lisa was probably already dressed up for something. I meant to ask if I was ruining any plans, but never got around to it. Wearing thick eye-liner and overalls, she looked too cool to be in the same room as me. Lisa is everything I've ever thought she'd be; with big curious eyes and a playful air to her, she teased me good heartedly and, just like that, everyone started talking.

Rosé sat back on the same spot on the couch and, now surrounded by her bandmates, apologized to me. "Ever since our last tour interviews make me feel horrible. It seems all I do is spend my time trying to keep up with people's expectations—they all want me to be something else."

 

**What did you mean when you said people want you to prove yourself?**

**Jisoo:** Punk rock wasn't about showing off, punk was about being heard. When you're a teenage girl in New York with nothing to show for yourself, you want to make people listen to you.

 **Rosé:** It's like at first we had no business being a rock band, and now, they want everything we do to fucking _mean something._

**What was it like being an all-girl rock band in the 70's?**

**Lisa:** No one wanted us around.

 **Jisoo:** It was like I was committing a crime just by hitting the drums. Girls weren't supposed to sweat or rock out.

 **Rosé:** At first everyone cared more about our boobs than our skills. Strangers would yell obscenities during our gigs, but after _Playing With Fire_ more women started showing up too and things started to change.

 **Jennie:** We played people's living-rooms and dingy bars, people threw things at us and perverts tried to grope us.

 **Lisa** : Jungmo said it's what built our character.

 **People called** **_BOOMBAYAH_ ** **jerk-off-punk.**

 **Lisa:** That's 'cause it was! (laughs)

 **Jennie:** I was as hormonal as any teenager and everyone kept telling me to close my legs and be a good girl, but ignoring a problem has never made it go away.

 **Jisoo:** I think we just decided we didn't care anymore.

 **Rosé:** The first thing I thought when I wrote the melody for that was "fuck it."

 **And what's** **_Playing With Fire about?_ **

**Jisoo:** That's the million dollar question, isn't it?

 **Jennie:** Over the years, people have assumed it was a political protest, burning your bra kind of deal. To be honest, I want it be about whatever the fuck people want it to be about, as long as they don't think it's a mindless love song.

 **Lisa:** Because it's not.

**You do write a lot about love.**

**Jennie:** Of course I do. Love doesn't make any sense, it's simple and at the same time a mystery. It'll always be a turn on.

**How did you deal with the sexual harassment and abuse at the beginning? It's a known fact how young you girls started off, but that didn't stop anyone from treating you like that.**

**Rosé:** I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say it didn't happen to us. It's complicated when you're a woman, and specially when you start out as young as we did; there were lots of people that wanted to take advantage of us.

 **Lisa:** Still, we had a lot of luck when we were starting out. Especially after Jungmo began working with us—things got a little better. He kept us from doing a lot of really dumb shit.

 **Jisoo:** We went on unsigned for a period of time after our first ep, and if it wasn't for having good people at our side, I'm sure even YG would've seriously ripped us off.

 **Jennie:** We dealt with everything as best as we could. We had each other's backs and our eyes wide open. There's no room for innocence in the industry, you don't grow up as much as you simply wake up. There are corners out here where you could fall into and get lost forever.

**As young women in the public eye, how do you feel about being hypersexualized?**

**Lisa:** We knew what we were getting ourselves into. You also kind of have to be really self-aware. Is this thing I'm doing going to be powerful? Can I make a difference and clear the way for other women, or is this just going to be used against me?

 **Jisoo:** It's really easy to get caught up, and we're not allowed to ever lose track of ourselves. We want to fuck shit up and redefine what making mistakes means in the first place. By our own terms. Sex is great and we own it. We own our bodies and our minds and we want to take control over the narratives people spread about it.

 **Lisa:** I wish we were the ones who composed The Runaway's _Don't Abuse Me_ , that song's the real deal.

 **Jisoo:** We're older now and we're trying to come into ourselves. We accepted to do this interview mostly because we want people to hear what we have to say.

**Let's back up a bit. This is 1980, it's Blackpink's five year anniversary. I want you to tell me a about the band.**

**Lisa:** We're not just a band, we're family.

 **Jennie:** Yeah. I know everyone says shit like this for the cameras, but we mean it. I met Jisoo when I was fifteen and she was sixteen, we had been playing coffee shops as a duo for a couple of years when we met Rose.

 **Rosé:** I was sixteen and restless.

 **Jisoo:** It just wasn't enough anymore. Acoustic guitars and that whole soft rock scene. It wasn't for us.

 **Rosé:** They had the same thing inside as me and we clicked immediately. Lisa was the last one to join us, but she was the missing piece. The first time we all played together was the first time in my life I ever felt at peace.

**You had just moved to Koreatown, right?**

**Lisa:** I had no reason to be there, really (laughs). I was part of a dance group that rehearsed in a room on top of Jisoo's mom's restaurant.

 **Jisoo:** Best jajangmyeon in Manhattan!

 **Lisa:** They had put on an ad in the restaurant that they were looking for a bass-player. I didn't even mean to go to the audition, but I was too early for dance practice and had some time to kill.

 **Jennie:** She was the only one who showed up anyway.

**What about what made you girls stay together? Bands that make as much success as you hardly do. The Sex Pistols didn't make it into a second album. The Runaways broke it off last year. What's keeping you together?**

**Jisoo:** I guess I just don't have anything better to do (laughs). I'm just kidding. It's not like I can imagine myself doing anything else.

 **Rosé:** Being in a band together is like being married. You gotta want it, and you gotta fight for it.

 **Lisa:** Having three wives is probably making my _yaai_ (grandmother in thai) roll in her grave (laughs). I love it.

 **Jennie:** It's also about evolving together. We're in this to express ourselves and make music.

**What's this rumor, Rosé, about a solo album?**

**Rosé:** It's bullshit, it's what it is. I don't need to do a solo album and neither do the girls. No one's fronting this band, we're a group and we're equal. Our music is everything the four of us bring to the table, we don't rule out any side of us.

 

THIS WAS when Jennie asked for us to take a break. There was no reason to push anything, and I could tell Rosé felt put off by my question. We had time. I was sent by _Rolling Stone_ to shadow Blackpink in a few gigs of the first leg of their U.S tour (that kicked off on the east coast) and by the time everyone was freshened up and back on the couch, I decided it was best to continue at another time. Jung Mo  kept looking at his watch and at me with the same crease between his eyebrows, and I decided we could continue another day. The musicians kissed me on the cheek before sauntering off for the preparations of that night's concert, and I watched them go feeling just a bit in love.

They have that effect.

My initial plan was to write an article centered on Rosé. I, like everyone else, thought she was indeed gearing up for a solo, and the tour name did nothing to placate those rumors.

I was wrong.

 

THE SECOND night at Madison Square Garden had far less nerves poisoning the air, and even if the band played with a little less wonder at the crowd (20 thousand people dancing and screaming at Blackpink's every whim, as if they had complete control over them), they seemed to have more fun. Jennie's voice rang particularly ferocious when she opened the show with _As If It's Your Last_ (Who are you to tell me what to do?/My pride is bruised, I’m burning up/But now my fists are closed and I've tasted blood/You can't tell me what to do anymore, you can't).

The third night felt like they made it (the first time I skipped the crowd experience and watched it from the sidelines), the musician's families were in the crowd and I swear I saw Jisoo dry her eyes in between beats of her drum. It could have been sweat, but when they ended their set and went up front to bow, they did it fully, on their knees and touching their foreheads on the ground for a moment, to then leave the stage hugging each other. This wasn't their first time playing for such a crowd on home ground, but I guess certain things never miss the novelty.

Jisoo is the youngest of six children, with four brothers and one sister, and they were all hanging out backstage with me. They're loving and very soft-spoken, even when her brother's pick on her and pull off the overprotective act, they do so in a way that isn't for anyone else.

Lisa's crowd consisted of her younger brother and friends. She still appears to not be on speaking terms with her parents, but this is something she absolutely refused to address in past interviews, so I didn't bother asking. When they started out, it was a known fact that Lisa had been living with Jennie's family and that's as much as anyone will disclose about it.

The girl's families interact in way that it gets close to impossible to know who's there to see who. I was invited for dinner that night, and as I watched family members hug the girls and treat all of them pretty much equally, it was when I really understood how wrong I was when I thought they secretly hated each other.

 

MY FLIGHT to Washington was fast and I got there in time to see the fans waiting out front for Blackpink's plane to arrive. The crowd itself wasn't that large and there were plenty of security-guards keeping things civil, but I couldn't help be reminded by the days of _Beatlemania_ when I saw teenage girls, and grown-ass men alike, scream at the top of their lungs as the band waved at them on their way to the car.

After the concert (loud, energetic, soul cleaning, if you'd ask me), I waited for the girls to take showers and we met in Jisoo and Jennie's room, who are the most organized between the four. They didn't look tired at all when they sat across from me on the bed, relaxed but alert, ready to answer some questions.

 

**You mentioned to me that you feel like you're "racing against time," Rosé. Where the four of you think you'll be at 40?**

**Jisoo:** Is this the "do you ever plan on settling down and having babies" question?

**No.**

**Jennie:** I want to still be making music. Maybe one day we do find people to marry or to have children with, but by the end of the day I still want to have my guitar and my sisters by my side.

 **Rosé:** I don't know _where_ I'll be, but I know I want to still be making music until the day we can't stand up on stage anymore.

 **Jisoo:** You would play even if you had to be in a wheelchair.

 **Rosé:** That's true. I really think I'll be making music at 40 and for the rest of my life. Blackpink will continue for as long as people can love us, and even after that, I know I'll still be doing this.

 **Jisoo:** I'll play the drums until my arms fall off. Then I guess I'll just carry on singing. That's what I'm sure of.

 **Lisa:** 40 kind of feels too far into the future right now; I plan my life one year at time at most. But the only thing I'm sure of is doing music, these three dorks and our little found family.

(The band took a moment to squeal and smother Lisa with kisses before we could move forward into the next question.)

**Do you think breaking into the market here in the U.S was made difficult by the fact that the four of you are of Asian descent?**

**Rosé:** Definitely.

 **Jisoo:** Square Two topped the charts in South Korea within the first week, that's something we only achieved with Deep End in here and we didn't even chart that well.

 **Lisa:** _As If It's Your Last_ is our second arena tour in the U.S and, to be honest, I never thought we'd get a chance to do another one of this magnitude.

 **Jennie:** It felt like we weren't welcomed here for a long time. We've been doing world tours since '76, not as big as this one of course, but we often felt more welcomed in places like South Korea and Thailand than we did here. We're U.S citizens, born and raised in Manhattan, but this city had never given us any love.

 

MAYBE NEW YORK didn't want to love them at first, but as the tour progressed through Virginia Beach, Columbia, Charleston and Atlanta, it was clear that the same could no longer be said about those cities. Though I did not tag along to those, all the gigs were sold-out and when I managed to get Jung Mo over the phone for a check-in, Blackpink's manager was delighted to tell me that everything was going well and that the girls were having a lot of fun.

You can always trust Blackpink's first and only manager to be enough of a dad to still treat the band as if they're kids.

 

THEIR CONCERT in Miami was not their last of the tour, they still have seven other countries to visit this year alone, but it was the last one I had a free pass to.

"You're welcome to always come see us for free!" Jisoo exclaimed from her spot on the makeup chair, where she was getting her eye artfully painted, once I mentioned this. "Just call Jungmo in advance and he'll get you tickets."

In Miami they were the closing act of a large festival. It was one in the morning and it had been raining non-stop for over three hours, the crowd looked ready to go home, but the second the lights were dimmed and the first riff of _As If It's Your Last_ ringed through, it was clear why they decided to start the setlist with their new single. The song was still a novelty, radio shows had just started adding it to their rosters, but already most of the crowd sang along to the chorus (As if it’s the last, as if it’s the last/Because it is the last, love/As if it’s the last, as if it’s the last/Because no one's ever touching me like this again, love).

With few changes, so far the tour set-list has been:

 

"As If It's Your Last"

"Whistle"

"Rip the Band-Aid"

"Dreamless Night"

"Freedom Speak"

"War Upstairs"

"Behind Masks"

"Friendly Fire"

"Stay"

"Playing With Fire"

"BOOMBAYAH"

 

I WAS supposed to do another session with Blackpink that night and that way have enough material to write this piece, but as it turned out, the after party was in the hotel we were staying in, and I still can't recall if we ever got around of resuming the interview or not. My recorder has nothing but a heartfelt rendition, by yours truly, of Queen's _Love of My Life,_ in a duet with someone that sounds remarkably like Freddie Mercury himself, and so I had to fly back home terribly empty handed.

Jung Mo, however, did come to my rescue when I called him the next day. Blackpink had a few studio days before they set of for the west coast leg of their tour and I was invited to join as long as I didn't spoil anything about the next album to anyone.

I don't think I had ever agreed to anything as fast in my entire life.

 

BLACKPINK'S PERSONAL studio is in the middle of nowhere.

I can't, of course, disclose its location, it was part of the deal. I can tell you, however, that the drive there was over four hours long from where I was and where I needed to be.

Once more, I was surprised with where I found the band. Their studio is in a very large house, victorian style, in the middle of a large estate. The rooms are scarcely furnished and large curtain-less windows line all the walls. Most of them were open during this drought season and cicadas made their very own symphony that could be heard anywhere in the house. Except in the actual studio.

The Blackpink I met that day was unlike any of the other facets of its four members I had encountered before. They were very serious and focused, long hairs tied back and sharp eyes at whatever task they had at hand. There was no sound tech, I guess they didn't need one for that stage of production—they were composing for their next album, something being built around _As If It's Your Last; an_  unique way of releasing music that I'm yet to see work for anyone else—and the way they work around each other is seamless.

For the first part of the day I did nothing but watch. They seemed to be working on some kind of melody; Lisa, Rosé and Jennie sat in benches around Jisoo's kit, communicating in a mix of Korean and English, a jump between languages I hadn't seen them do before, and a lot of grunting and hand gestures gave color their heated discussions. Cursing too.

Rosé hummed the vocal parts, Lisa calibrated the notes by harmonizing or merely kicking Rosé in the shin. It seemed to work and, after around four hours, they had the bones of an intense melody fleshed out.  

I was not authorized to hear what Jennie and Jisoo were working over on the other side of the soundproof glass of the recording booth, but if the way they were laughing and furiously scribbling on their notepads was any indication, we might just get another big hit on our way.

Any doubt I had left of whether Blackpink was going to break up after this tour was promptly washed away from seeing them work together on new music.

Their working style clearly comes from years of being together as a band. Lisa and Rosé bring the melody mostly figured out, and then Jennie and Jisoo add the words to it, all four of them tweak it around so both can match, their roles in production overlapping and twisting.

During that time, it became clear that Jennie and Rosé share a partnership in the likes of Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards or even Strummer-Jones. Whereas Jennie Kim was raised by a loving middle-class family, attending a New Zealand private middle-school for better education. Roseanne Park lost her mother at eight and was shipped off from Australia to the U.S, to be raised by her grandparents making a living in Koreatown.

As equal as they might be, Rosé is the anger behind their sound, the screams for change and the attitude that dares others to do something, Jennie is right there with her though, using her words to get everything she wants out of the melody.

The both of them sit together, guitars in hand, and Jisoo and Lisa man the sound equipment for what would be the first demo of the song they're working on. They did enough takes for me to wonder if it would be easier to just record the whole thing, but Rosé and Jennie don't settle down for anything less than perfect.

 

WAITING ON them didn't feel like waiting at all. The band worked non stop until the early hours of the next day, when I was sneaky enough to take the pictures that are accompanying this story, but the entire process was delightful to accompany.

Jisoo is clearly the one in charge of keeping everyone's spirits up. She was almost doting with her attentive eyes and saying all the right things at the right time. She kept Rosé and Jennie from obsessing too much.

"This isn't the final product," she explained to me conspicuously. "They shouldn't worry as much as they do, we'll still work on this song some more before it's done."

Lisa's verdict was also somehow key to the composing. She'd listen to the demos with her eyes closed and the others would hover around her, biting their nails. While she listened to the last one they recorded though, she was smiling.

After breakfast we sat down to talk again. Blackpink is everything and nothing how the media has showed them the past five years. They are every bit as angry and foul mouthed as the older generation accuses them to be. They don't care if they get twisted noses or are called bad names; but Rosé, Jisoo, Jennie and Lisa really are in this only for the music and those who care to listen.

 

**It wasn't until this world tour that the media fully acknowledged the band's popularity.**

**Lisa:** We don't need anyone's validation.

 **Jisoo:** Doing a stadium tour in Asia was really cool, though. Seoul was insane!

 **Rosé:** We had to go on our biggest world tour for North America to finally go " _hey, these little girls are really making music!"_ (scoffs)

 **Jennie:** We hadn't really done any big promoting until now, I think. We just thought it was time for people to hear something about us that wasn't the media calling us sluts and attention seekers. I mean, we don't even mind being called sluts, but we wanted our music to be taken seriously with the stuff we're putting out now.

**Do you feel you have to top yourselves with each album?**

**Rosé:** Yes.

 **Jennie:** No. (both laugh)

 **Rosé:** It really is about topping _ourselves_ , though. It's not about anyone else.

 **Jennie:** People kept comparing us to The Runaways all the time, like it was some sort of competition. It really wasn't.

 **Lisa:** They were doing their thing and we're doing ours. It's a waste of time to fight other women.

 **Jisoo:** We gain a lot more by joining forces and showing men how it's done.

**Fans consider _Square Two_ and _Deep End_ the best albums Blackpink has ever put out and are constantly comparing anything new to them. Are those albums a shadow looming over you?**

**Jennie:** In a certain way, yes. Whenever we release new tracks it takes a bit of an adjusting period for the fans to give us any positive feedback.

 **Lisa:** It doesn't mean we're trying to recreate the feeling those albums had, that's done. We can't live in the past like that.

 **Jisoo:** _Square Two_ was composed very fast. The U.S had just pulled our troops out of Vietnam, we were feeling really good and hopeful about the future. We can't ever write any other song like _Stay_ again because it was a _feeling_ and we simply can't recreate that. We're not trying to.

 **Rosé:** People keep wanting us to write things similar to _BOOMBAYAH_ and _Playing With Fire_ too, but the thing is that if we only make tracks like that it'll get boring pretty fast.

 **Lisa:** We're not the same as we were when we first started this band, and I think that's a good thing. Everything's always changing and we're not planning on being left behind. We want to be right at the front of good change. Always.

**You've been criticized for writing "whiny" lyrics.**

**Jennie:** Sure, of course. If talking about real things, like political awareness, women empowerment, sexuality and domestic violence makes people call us whiny, then fucking be it.

 **Lisa:** It's called trying to be a decent human being.

 **Jisoo:** We can talk about whatever we want, but we also want to reach people with our music. The world is changing and everyone's taking sides.

 **Rosé:** Punk was about being done with everything that was going on. Psychedelic rock and hippies did 20 minute instrumental tracks about acid trips; they were just jerking off on stage, and not even in a fun way. We're with The Clash on this; we sing about the world that affects us.

 **Lisa:** We have morals.

**Yet, I ask, is having a record contract with one of the world's biggest companies, YG Entertaiment, compatible with those morals?**

**Jisoo:** What's the fun in life without a little bit of contradiction?

 **Jennie:** We're trying to do something that matters; but we're aiming to be the greatest group in the world too, that means going on the long run, going for the big guns. At the same time, we're still trying to have fun—I mean, we never want to be _too_ respectable—and maybe all of it can't coexist, but we'll try.

 **Lisa:** Being in YG allows us to reach further. To do more. But we don't plan on ever getting too comfortable. We're never giving them our necks.

**What can we expect from the next album?**

**Lisa:** We certainly have been exploring more of our ska influences. We got in contact with ska artists during our stay in Japan and it certainly opened our eyes to things that we'd love to explore more.

 **Jisoo:** It's still going to be a rock album, though. We have a lot we want to do.

**What motivates you at this point? Do you think your egos play a part in all this?**

**Jisoo:** Our fans motivate us.

 **Jennie:** Our motivation is everything we just said to you. We still have a lot we want to say, too.

 **Lisa:** And we're absolutely bonkers about what we do. Making music, playing on stage, meeting new people and seeing the world. Like, _really seeing the world._ It's what we're really about, we're not in this life for the scenic-route.

 **Rosé:** Of course there's ego in there too, you have to be at least a little megalomaniac to make it in this business.

 **Jennie:** This tour is called _As If It's Your Last_ because that song has a lot of personal meaning to us and it's something we want people to take seriously. At the same time, if we just take that title into consideration, it's a lot about how we face this business. We never know for how long we get to be a band like this, we want it to be forever, but we never how long we'll make it in this business.

 **Lisa:** The Stones said it first, "you can't always get what you want."

 **Rosé:** People want us to prove we deserve to be where we are all the time, and I just want them to know that maybe _we_ don't want to be taken that seriously, but that doesn't mean that we don't take music seriously. The discussion of how music should be taken is another one all together.

 **Jisoo:** We're not going anywhere. Haters can suck it and get used to us. We still have a lot more noise to make. That's what keeps us going, it's the fuel of our war machine.

**Is there anything else you'd like to add?**

**Lisa:** Punk-rock is dead.

 **Jisoo:** No it's not! (laughs)

 **Rosé:** Am I going to be punched in the face if I say it's not dead as long as we're alive and kicking?

 **Jennie:** Yes. I'm going to be the one to punch you.

 

 

 _Hani Ahn is a writer for_ Rolling Stone U.S _, transferred from the magazine's south korean branch while she works on a book about the influence of U.S culture on South Korea. You can contact her on_ 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 - 0298 _._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope reading this was as much fun to you as it was writing it to me! Let me know your thoughts~
> 
>  
> 
> As always, a huge thank you to Sarah, Sam and Rainy for putting up with my insecurities as a ficwriter. You're the best <3.


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